Cushla is forced to leave her teaching post

Cushla is forced to leave her teaching post after Bradley and Slattery make her support for the McGeown family the grounds for declaring her position at St Dallan’s untenable. Their proposed year away is framed as a response to delicate community relations, but the later news that another teacher has taken her place shows the practical cost of that decision.

The meeting at home

Cushla arrives home after going to the RUC station. The visit has been conspicuous: Gina tells her that half the town saw her going in and the other half saw her coming out. Eamonn Lavery has phoned twice, and Gina, twisting her hands, says Cushla must stay out of the bar. Her voice trails off as she looks beyond Cushla and warns that someone is outside. The school’s intervention follows immediately on the heels of this public scrutiny.

Slattery and Bradley are waiting on the step. Cushla remarks that they have mobilised quickly, then walks into the sitting room, where the men follow her. She sits down before they explain why they have come. As Slattery looks around the room, Cushla points out the colour television and needles him about a television she accuses him of having swindled from her dying father. Her sarcasm sets the terms of the encounter: she will not make their visit comfortable or pretend that the men’s authority is beyond challenge.

The school’s stated grounds

Bradley, fingering his collar, says that the school has serious concerns. The explanation is not about a specific classroom incident. Cushla, they say, befriended a family regarded as disreputable despite being advised against it, and sheltered them even after one member had been arrested for murder. In the school’s account, her personal decision to help the family has become a problem of community relations.

The men connect that judgment directly to her employment. They say that relations in the town are delicate, that her position on the staff is not currently tenable, and that an emergency meeting of the board of governors will take place later. Cushla asks whether they are dismissing her. Bradley does not describe the decision as a dismissal; he says it would be best for her to take a year off. The wording softens the action without changing its immediate effect: she is being told that she cannot continue in her post under the present circumstances.

Gina steps toward Slattery and asks whether he is going to say anything. He looks at her coldly and turns away. The exchange leaves the family’s distress in the room while the men retain control over the employment decision. Cushla’s assistance to the McGeowns is treated not as a private act with no bearing on school life, but as grounds for making her professional place in the town conditional.

Departure and replacement

The decision reaches beyond the meeting itself. As Cushla leaves the house, she takes a wallet of photographs from her basket and puts it in the pocket of Michael’s cardigan before collecting her keys. In the car she glances toward St Dallan’s. Gerry Devlin has told her that she has been replaced by Bride, a girl from Ballyclare. The detail makes the consequence concrete: although Bradley described the proposal as a year off, the school has already filled her place.

The radio offers an ordinary forecast of a hot spell after the school holidays, but Cushla’s attention turns toward the school and the news of her replacement. The contrast places the change in her working life inside an otherwise continuing daily routine. Her departure is not presented as a formal resolution of the board meeting, whose outcome is still to come; what is already clear is that the school has made her support for the McGeown family incompatible with remaining on its staff.